This week in Congress, General Petraeus, told our representatives that we have to pause on the draw down of our troops in Iraq. Iraq is not really any safer than it was a year ago when we were told that we needed to surge our troops in order to bring stability to the country. I didn’t watch the testimony. I’m sure I would have been sickened by the baloney. I’m a bit cynical after growing up during the Berlin buildup, a draftee during the War in Vietnam. In 1989 we were told there would be a peace dividend following the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union. The Age of Aquarius seemed to be at hand, then Saddam invaded Kuwait and had to be driven out. We were liberating Kuwait. After Kuwait was liberated and we had destroyed much of Iraq’s infrastructure in that battle, we had to impose a “no-fly zone.” There would be no peace dividend it seemed. We continued to build weapons systems for an enemy we no longer faced. We have submarines and carrier battlegroups designed to fight a war and an enemy that we no longer have. In 2001 we were attacked by Islamic radicals. These guys were actually Saudi nationals so we attacked not Saudi Arabia but Afghanistan and then eighteen months later we attacked a country we had already destroyed. We now occupy a country we devastated in 1991 and we’ve completely destroyed it. The country that was once Iraq no longer exists. It’s been replaced by a puppet government that can’t even protect its own citizens so it must rely on the United States government. How convenient?
“War is terrible…and terribly profitable.”–Vladimir Lenin
We fight for peace or democracy, that’s what we tell our soldiers, their families, our country, but what we really fight for is profit. It’s really about the arms trade. It’s about the military industrial complex. Americans are wonderful people, but our government is controlled by sinister forces that will be in place no matter who is elected in November. Whether McCain, Clinton or Obama, the military industrial complex and its contrived wars will go on without end.
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